Ford Focus brake problem follow up

Hello. A few months ago I posted a message about a problem with my
Ford Focus SE having intermittent brake problems. I figured it might
be beneficial to some to hear how things ended up. It doesn't look

like I can post a follow-up to the original thread, so I started a new
one. Here's a link to the original post if anyone is interested:
http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&threadm È8d5398.0304140421.317573c3%40posting.google.com&rnum=1&prev=/groups%3Fhl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26q%3Dauthor:tbecker%2540classm.net%2B
To summarize, about four or five times between the months of January
to May, I experienced temporary brake failure. It started when it was
very cold. The car had been parked over night one very cold night.
There was a hissing sound as I pressed down on the brake pedal. It was
very hard to stop the car as I turned around in the street. After the
first time I braked, the problem went away. It happenned 1 or 2 more
times after that (but with no hissing sound), spaced out by a 4-5
weeks each time. Then one day I was leaving my work parking lot, I
couldn't stop at all! Again, after letting up and re-applying the
brake, the car stopped fine. Took it to the dealer three times after
that to try to get it fixed. Each time, they could not duplicate the
problem. The most they would test it for was three or four days at a
time. They kept saying the same thing - that if they couldn't
duplicate the problem, they wouldn't even touch the car or try to
repair it. Called Ford customer service directly and they said the
same thing.
At first I had thought this problem was related to the cold. As the
weather warmed up, I figured I would be safe through the spring and
summer. Then, the problem happenned to my wife, as she was driving
down a hill! Fortunately, she was able to stop after pressing the
brake again. Took it back to the dealer again and again they drove it
for a week and found nothing. One guy actually told me to "just drive
it"! They refused to even attempt to repair the car.
Well, after that I contacted the Attorney General's office (New York
State). I submitted a new car, lemon law arbitration request. It got
accepted (we had to pay a $250 filing fee) and about a month later, we
had an arbitration meeting. The rep from Ford didn't even contest
anything, just pointed out a minor technical mistake I made with the
documentation. The arbitor decided in our favor, and today we brought
home a new Focus.
So everything worked out fine in the end. I am confident that the
problem was with the particular car that I was unlucky enough to get
and is not a widespread problem with the Focus line. I don't expect to
have the same problem with this new car. Every person I know who has a
Focus is happy with it. However, it really puts a bad taste in my
mouth toward Ford. There were a number of possible reasons for the
brake problem suggested by people in my original thread. It upsets me
that the dealership refused to even try a repair attempt and was
perfectly happy to let me drive away with an unsafe car. It makes me
wonder even more that the Ford rep didn't even make a case for not
replacing the vehicle during the arbitration meeting. All he did was
request to test drive the car (which I let him do) and pronounced that
it was fine. I offerred to settle for having the braking system
replaced, but he didn't want to. I'm still scrathing my head over the
whole thing. Was the rep just going through the motions and actually
doing me a favor? Why couldn't someone at Ford look at the case and
make a decision to replace the car? Is this way of doing business
really the most cost-effective for Ford? Instead of paying about $1000
to replace the braking system, they paid over $10,000 to replace my
car. Oh well...we picked out a 2003 ZTS which is nicer than the old
one.
Free advice for anyone going into lemon law arbitration - make sure
you have copies of the original work orders for each time you brought
in your card. I brought in a work history log which had two of the
work orders on it, and there was some question as to whether that was
sufficient. Seems like common sense to me now, but at the time I
thought it would be less complicated. Also make sure that whatever
organization you go through for the meeting sends you a instruction
booklet about the lemon law.
Last thing, I asked the salesperson, as we were picking up the new
car, what they would do with the old car. He said they would probably
sell it at an auction. I don't know if he was right or not, but that
scares me a little. I know it would probably be sold "as is" and that
probably it's history would be made available to anyone who is buying
it, but I don't know. The car is in perfect shape (other than the
defect) and I can see someone just taking it home and driving it
thinking there is nothing wrong. So, here's the vehicle ID, just in
case of the remote possibility someone does a google search for it.
1FAFP34P52W232632
If anyone wants to ask me anything about it, email me at tbecker4 "at"
nycap "dot" rr "dot" com
Thanks for letting me unload!

Really valuable post tBecker. Thanks. This is off topic but I had the
opposite experience with a tire dealer here in Arizona recently. My wife had
a flat in her Focus. She drove it to a local tire dealer and the guy told
her she needed to buy a new tire and that it would be wise to replace both
(front) so she said OK. While doing the job the guy came out and told her
that the back tires were shot and should be replaced. Thinking she was being
scammed she refused. The guy found two used tires which look to be all but
brand new, balanced and mounted both at no charge. Just said he was
uncomfortable having here drive around on bad tires. I wrote a letter of
appriciation. Service like that goes a long way. Sounds like your Ford
dealer needs a lesson.
jor

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